


Of Mice and Men

by novelogical (writingmonsters)



Category: Burnt (2015)
Genre: Adam Jones Gets a Fucking Clue, Love at First Reunion, M/M, Scene Rewrite, Watch How I Warp Canon To Suit My Purposes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-30 00:31:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16754431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingmonsters/pseuds/novelogical
Summary: Adam arrives in London with his Master Plan, only for everything to be derailed the moment Tony Balerdi walks through the hotel room door.





	Of Mice and Men

**Author's Note:**

  * For [misanthropiclycanthrope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/misanthropiclycanthrope/gifts).



_"The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men, Gang aft agley" -Robert Burns_

It’s a fucking travesty, is what it is.

The Langham is struggling -- sure Tony must be bullying it along as best he can, but there’s only so much that a maitre d’s magic and fresh polish to the front-of-house’s tired veneer can do to cover up the absolute shitshow being plated on fine bone china for their diners.

They could be doing so much better. 

_ Adam  _ could do so much better.

The eggs are too rubbery, the yolks bright orange. Horrifying. He pushes the plate to the far end of the table where he won’t have to look at it, focuses instead on the Master Plan scribbled in his dog-earred, badly worn notebook. 

There are no failures this time -- it isn’t in the cards. 

Somehow, when he glances up from the scrawled bullet points and careful notations of penance done, his eyes are drawn across the room. To the briefest of silhouettes against the grey London sunlight. Tony Balerdi moving through the restaurant, all slim shoulders and straight back in a pale grey suit.

The reason he has come all this way to London -- to the Langham, of all places. 

Tony.

Everything hinges on him -- on Tony saying yes -- and he has never been one to deny Adam Jones anything.

He scribbles the note across the front of the menu board. A reminder. A demand.  _ Little Tony. Room 659. _ And he knows Tony will come.

Tony will come, and Adam will present to him the Master Plan -- “I’m going to take over your restaurant” -- and Tony will say yes. Tony  _ has  _ to say yes. Not just because this is Adam, but because Tony is no fool, he knows exactly how badly the Langham is floundering. 

It’s a marriage of convenience; otherwise they’re all fucked.

The knock, when it comes, is hesitant. A question.

“It’s your father's hotel, you can let yourself in.” Adam does not look up from the journal. He has orchestrated all of this, gone over every outcome, every possible scenario again and again in his mind on the eight hour flight from New Orleans to London. He launches into the speech -- ticking off the Langham's sins as Tony's light footsteps carry him through into the suite. “The  _ boudin noir _ was cooked yesterday.” 

The chef responsible for that should be taken out and shot.

“It was warmed up five hours under a heat lamp. A little crust had formed around it.” Adam makes a face, does glance up then -- just to gauge Tony's reaction -- and…

Oh.

Tony.

Flushed and indignant, with eyes flashing, looking at Adam like he can't believe he's really here and like he might just strangle the man with his bare hands. Shifting from foot-to-foot and barely able to suppress his anger -- all brilliant, bright fire and for a moment the both of them entirely at a loss for words.

_ Oh _ , Adam thinks. And his heart does something stupid in the confines of his chest.

Tony recovers first; three years of scar tissue built up over the old, tender wounds will do that. Blinks fast and tilts his head and draws his wits about him. “Are you drunk or stoned?” There is wrath in the thin line of his mouth, bitterness in the way he spits each word. “Or stoned, or drunk, or something else no one apart from you has ever been?”

Adam watches him pace -- remembers. Tony always so fidgety;  _ moved by emotion _ . He shouldn't smile, shouldn't needle him, but it's so wonderfully familiar and so amusing to see Tony prickly and dynamic and standing here before him ready to bitch him out again. “You're serving seared tuna.”

Tony looks like he might fly apart right there at the end of Adam's bed, overwrought and with a thousand micro-expressions in a tangle across his features. Fury. Elation. Exasperation. Laughter. “And you -- shockingly -- are not floating dead in the Thames, but are somehow here, after three years, to criticize my restaurant.”

“Because you know you’re better than this.” Adam flicks the journal closed -- he doesn't need it. This, their give-and-take, he  _ knows _ this. It is as familiar to him as breathing.

To hell with Plans.

“ _ Que te jodan. _ ” Tony jitters on his toes, fuming. Casts his gaze around the room which looks no different than every other room in the Langham except for the fact that there is Adam Jones sitting in the center of it. Adam Jones who he tries so hard to avoid looking at now, like staring at the sun.

“C’mon, Tony, where’s your self respect?” Adam sits up straighter, swings his legs off the edge of the bed. Serious now, no more bullshit between them. “You used to run the best restaurant in Paris.”

Tony whirls on him, then, the color high in his cheeks, voice too sharp and too loud. Three years of pain and fury and heartache boiling over all at once. “Yeah,” he snarls “and you  _ destroyed  _ it!” 

“Good,” Adam proclaims. “Anger.”

And he means it.

He hadn’t known what to expect, not really. 

As well as he had known Tony Balerdi, as easily as he had always been able to play the little maitre d’, Adam had not been certain what had been waiting for him at the other end of all of this. Someone who hated him? Or worse, who didn’t care at all?

No, he can read it in every nervous, fidgety inch of Tony -- in the flickering glances that fear to linger too long, in the affection that softens the anger in his mouth. Tony still cares; Tony always cares so damn much. 

And that thought shouldn’t make his heart squirm -- shivering and falling over the beats like a trembling junkie gone too long without a fix. But this is  _ Tony _ , and this is different all of a sudden, and instead of saying all of the things he had planned to say -- instead of presenting him with the Master Plan the way he has so carefully arranged it, Adam finds himself saying softly, breathlessly “God, I missed this. I missed  _ you _ .”

It hits the air, a quiet earnest admission -- a truth Adam hadn’t even realized until the words are hanging still and uncertain between them. And Tony stumbles, imperceptibly -- but enough that Adam notices, always notices -- something desperately fragile flickering in his honey-bright eyes.

Something like hope.

Like fear.

The same damning, dangerous things that shiver behind Adam’s breastbone. 

There is a warmth in his face that Tony has never seen before, a dawning softness that turns the sharp, rugged edges tender. “Hi Tony.”

“Adam.” Tony hesitates, fumbling for words. The beginnings of a frown -- fury reformed into concern, into anxiety, into  _ questions _ \-- creasing the soft space between his brows. “What happened to you? Where have you been?” And he has to bite his tongue, too afraid to hope. Still suspicious. The old love bursts like a sunrise in his chest, bright and painful, and he squashes it mercilessly between clenched teeth.

He can’t do this again. He just  _ can’t _ .

It was too painful.

Adam’s frightening blue eyes do not blink -- drinking in every twitch, every half-flicker of emotion across Tony’s too-expressive face. “Louisiana, mostly.” He bows his spine, settles his elbows on his knees. So much weight in just those sparse words. If he had a hundred years, he could not begin to explain  _ Louisiana _ . “Shucked a million oysters.”

“I don’t --” Tony tilts his head, tries to catch some extra meaning that Adam hasn’t quite offered up. The crease between his eyebrows deepens.

“I gave up drinking,” Adam’s pronouncement is firm. Steady. And then, chagrined, he tacks on “and, uh, sniffing, snorting, injecting, licking yellow frogs, and women.”

Tony snorts. And this? This is old hat too; they have done this song and dance before. “Why should I believe you?”

Adam does not answer. He does not debate or argue or make promises, the way he had all the times before. When he had promised to get sober. When he had assured Tony he was clean. Instead, he rolls up his sleeves, slowly and deliberately, turning out the insides of his elbows to show Tony the vulnerable spots -- the old scar tissue, the healed over track marks like the ugliest sorts of constellations. 

There are no new marks. The scars are long healed.

“I’ve been clean two years, two weeks, and six days now, Tony.” Just as quickly as the scars were revealed, Adam rolls down his sleeves again, enough to cover the worst of the damage. “I’d give you hours and minutes too, but I wasn’t too keen on precision during the initial detox.” The ugliest moments spent screaming and sobbing, sweaty and sick and alone. No one to save him from himself then. When he lifts his gaze to look Tony in the eye, Adam is unwavering. Earnest.  “This time’s real.”

“Oh.” And Tony doesn’t know how to deal with this. Adam alive and well and  _ whole _ \-- no longer a specter to haunt his dreams; the cannot-be, the addict. Tragedies. “That’s -- that’s good.” He is blinking hard, scrounging for the edge of the wooden dresser to brace himself; a little bit breathless, a little too overcome by it all. “You know,” he murmurs “after you disappeared, Jean Luc and I had to close the restaurant. There were drug dealers… and rumors you had been stabbed to death in Amsterdam.”

And what Tony thought of him, then? It shows now on his face -- the early devastation. The anger and the heartbreak and the fear that had left him wrung out and sick, sifting through the wreckage once again for salvage.

“I fucked everything up in Paris, I know that.” There is no hiding from it. ‘Fucked up’ doesn’t feel sufficient to encompass Adam’s crash-and-burn. “I just --” How to explain? How to make tangible, understandable, the revelations that come with sobriety, with the monotony of a million oysters and three years. “It was perfect and I didn’t know how to hold on to it. I tried to control everything. Then, when it all went to shit, I tried to run from it.”  _ And I left you behind to deal with the aftermath _ . The shame sits heavy and familiar in his bones -- unshakeable, even when he rolls his shoulders, risks a sad, fond smile up at Tony who still leans so heavily against the dresser. “But it was beautiful, wasn’t it? God, we were beautiful. All young and stupid and hungry for the world.”

Something in Tony cracks. A brief spasm of agony passes across his face and is quickly smoothed away. He is exhausted -- half-heartbroken already -- and he can’t bear any more of this. “What are you doing here?”

Adam stands, scrubbing at the back of his neck. For once wrong-footed, uncertain. “You know, when I touched down in Heathrow, I had a whole Master Plan, but…”  _ I wasn’t prepared for you.  _ “I didn’t expect -- you’re still beautiful, you know that? You haven’t changed a day.” And he can’t help it, he is smiling a wide, stupid grin, and all of his rehearsed speeches and meticulous plans have gone to hell in the face of one Tony Balerdi. “Still the same bossy, fastidious, feisty  _ bastard  _ you were in Paris with your goddamn suits and your Bambi eyes.”

It isn’t possible, the things Adam is saying. Tony cannot be hearing what he thinks he is -- and yet, there is always that stupid, lingering hope that threatens to choke him now. “If you were trying to convince me of your sobriety, this is not helping.” 

_ You’re still beautiful _ . It is only Adam talking so much nonsense, the way he always has; not worth believing. And Tony shouldn’t let it touch him, shouldn’t let the softness of the words echo in the hollow behind his breastbone, but it hurts. It  _ hurts _ . 

He cannot look at Adam, has to look anywhere but -- staring wildly around the room in an effort to find something safe. Something neutral and meaningless that won’t make his chest squeeze tight with longing and delusions. 

Somehow, he thinks he manages to laugh. A short, shattering sound. “I really cannot tell if you think you are being genuine, or if you are insulting me.” It would be just like Adam, after all...

But Adam is still smiling, looking at Tony like he holds all the answers in the universe, and the distance between them is shrinking fast. “Do you still match your ties and socks?”

“Shut up.” There is nowhere to run.

All at once they are close enough that Adam could reach out and touch -- could savor the heat of the blush that rises to Tony’s soft cheeks, could ruffle his hair, rumple his suit. He sees the hairline fractures that crack across the last of Tony’s careful composure, catches the way he starts to tremble, backed against the window with the scrubbed-pale sunlight forming halos around his sweet, frightened face.

“Why are you  _ here _ ?” Tony’s breath hitches, his voice threatening to break. “What do you want, Adam?”

Fuck it.

“You.”

The world falls out from under Tony. “What?”

“I want  _ you  _ \-- I want us to be a team again, like we were in Paris, but even better this time. I’m going after my third star and I need you.”

“You mean you need my restaurant?” And just as quickly as Tony finds himself soaring for the heavens, his heart shatters. Not  _ Tony _ , never Tony -- only his blind faith, his name, his connections. The Langham. 

“Yeah,” Adam admits. “I thought so.” He drags a hand down his face, aggrieved by his own stupidity, his complete and utter blindness. “I had it all in the fucking notebook -- stage a coup, take over the Langham, and you’d say yes. Because you  _ always  _ say yes.”

It’s like a slap across the face --  _ you always say yes _ . An easy mark. A stupid, lovesick fool. And Tony flinches, recoils from the words with tears stinging hot against the backs of his eyes. “Get out.” His voice cracks, barely more than a whisper.

“I know -- I know. It’s a fucking mess,” Adam scrambles, reaches for Tony who is backpedaling, hoping for a graceful retreat toward the exit. Hoping Adam will at least grant him that much dignity. But Adam snatches at Tony’s sleeve, catches him by the wrist. “It’s a fucking mess all over again, but I didn’t realize it until you walked through that door, Tony.” He is rambling, falling all over the words in an effort to get them out fast enough -- to convince Tony to listen. To stay. “I want you. Not the restaurant, not the Michelin stars.  _ You _ . With me. Making something great together.”

The tendons in Tony’s slender wrist spasm, long fingers clenching. Adam sees the way he quavers, the protests that start and die on his lips, and he tries again -- slower. Speaks gently and carefully to cradle Tony’s fragile emotions.

“Look.” 

Tony’s eyes are so wide, so many shades of ochre and honey and amber. So wary.

“I’m not stupid -- I know you loved me, in Paris. I don’t know if you still do. After all the shit I’ve pulled I probably don’t deserve it. But,” Adam smooths his scarred knuckles over the curve of Tony’s cheek, slips a finger beneath his chin to turn the sweet, reluctant face toward his own.  _ Please, Tony. Please look at me? _ “I know I probably loved you, at least a little bit, in Paris -- and I think I fell in love with you the moment you told me to go fuck myself.”

“Adam --”

His name sounds so perfect when Tony pronounces it.  _ Ah _ -dam. No one else has ever said it that way.

“I didn’t realize how much I’d missed you -- how much you mean to me -- until I ran away from it all.” And where there were inches between them, now there is no space at all; Tony frozen and scarcely daring to breathe, and Adam forever taking liberties, willing him to understand. To believe him. “And then I come here, and you walk through that fucking door, and I realize there’s been a you-sized piece of me that’s been missing and I’m sorry, Tony. That doesn’t even begin to cover over all my sins, but I’m so sorry.”

Tony does not say a word, and for once Adam cannot quite read the play of emotion across his open, vulnerable face. He works his mouth open and closed a few times, trying for the right words, bright eyes roving across Adam’s face. And something softens in him -- some dreadful knot of anxiety loosens at his core, the frightened, drawn-tight tension bleeding from his shoulders drinking in Adam’s electric blue eyes, the three-day-old stubble. 

“You’re still fucking crazy,” he says at last. But he says it fondly. Lovingly.

“Just a little bit.” Adam concedes, tracing the pad of his thumb along the curve of Tony’s bottom lip. 

It’s almost a kiss, Tony speaking softly, the words formed against Adam’s fingertips. “You want to cook for me?” And there is something thoughtful in his eyes, some bright gleam of inspiration. Turning the notion over. Considering the uncertain, unspoken things. “To take over the restaurant entirely.” His breath is warm, ghosting humid over Adam’s knuckles. “We would redo the kitchen and the dining areas -- plan a relaunch.” A stern look, all raised eyebrows and serious business. “It’s a lot of money. A lot of work.”

Is Adam Jones worth it?

“Say ‘no’,” Adam offers, closing the last breath of space between them.

“ _ Yes. _ ” 

Tony rises up to meet him. And Adam had never given a thought to how Tony might have kissed before, but he kisses sweetly, clumsily -- all gentle press of lips and desperate fingers fisted in Adam’s shirtfront -- and all Adam can think is how  _ right _ . How perfect, to draw Tony in and kiss him deeper, taste the bite of coffee and the sweetness of him, to drag his hands through the slicked back hair, find the spot at the nape of Tony’s neck that makes him shiver.

And he almost hadn’t seen it.


End file.
